Julian Norris

Diatoms are cosmopolitan and a widely spread microbe that form a glass shell around them, a silica. They are the pioneer in most sources of water. It's not hard to imagine that they maybe one of the earliest lifeform back then too.

RFK Jr. is hammered by Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) on women's reproductive rights at his confirmation hearing for secretary of Health and Human Services. "When was it that you decided to sell out the va... TikTok video by MSNBC

You know what’s crazy, I don’t think RFK Jr actually believes anything he says after seeing this. He’s just a puppet for the Republican party.
www.tiktok.com/t/ZT2jJrR83/

Give YOUR feedback to Iowa about the prospect of removing evolution and climate change education from their education standards!

Imagine discussing biology without references to its foundational concept 😂

“We’re removing references to gravity from intro to physics”

Widespread occurrence of benzimidazole resistance single nucleotide polymorphisms in the canine hookworm, Ancylostoma caninum, in Australia Canine hookworm (Ancylostoma caninum), a gastrointestinal nematode of domestic dogs, principally infects the small intestine of dogs and has the poten…

New widespread occurrence of canine hookworms, *Ancylostoma caninum*, from Australia that have evolved mutations allowing them to resist the drug benzimidazole www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Concomitant formation of protocells and prebiotic compounds under a plausible early Earth atmosphere | PNAS Revealing the origin of life and unambiguously detecting fossil remains of the earliest organisms are closely related aspects of the same scientifi...

Organic films containing protocells and other prebiotic compounds needed for the origin of life form in the presence of silica in a miller-urey type experiment! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Review of Gastornithiformes Resurrecting the taxon Diatryma: A review of the giant flightless Eocene Gastornithiformes (Aves), with a report of the first skull of Diatryma geiselensis

In a victory for wistful nostalgics in the palaeontology world, a new paper suggests resurrecting the genus Diatryma (formerly lumped into Gastornis) based on a good number of skeletal differences. Lots of lovely figures in this one, congrats to the authors!
palaeo-electronica.org/content/2024...

Woolly Rhino as on display

This is not a model. Or a shabby taxidermized modern rhino. This is a "fossilised" Woolly Rhinoceros, discovered in Starunia mine in Carpathian Ukraine (then Poland) in 1929. Dating to the Pleistocene, its exquisite preservation is owed to a mixture of brine, oil & clay. Held on display in Krakow. 🧵

The dinosaur Edmontosaurus in frontal view, starring at the viewer with light blue eyes

EDMONTOSAURUS IS HERE TO TELL YOU THAT IT'S VALID TO EAT FINGERS
(and sometimes arms)

#paleoart #sciart #paleostream

Happy Thanksgiving from your friends at WitmerLab! Lots to be thankful for, but we'll single out the purity of the animals we study & of the scientific riddles they pose. The animals themselves have no politics, no nationality, no religion, no judgement, no baggage. And many of them are delicious! 🦃

#HappyThanksgiving from WitmerLab! You have your holiday traditions, and we have ours! Yes, we CT scanned our turkey on our best turkey platter. Science has never been so delicious! And like any good dinosaur biologist, I prepared and accessioned the skeleton—OUVC 10789. 🦃🦖

Synapsids and sensitivity: Broad survey of tetrapod trigeminal canal morphology supports an evolutionary trend of increasing facial tactile specialization in the mammal lineage The trigeminus nerve (cranial nerve V) is a large and significant conduit of sensory information from the face to the brain, with its three branches extending over the head to innervate a wide variet...

Miyamae, J.A. et al. 2024. Synapsids and sensitivity: Broad survey of tetrapod trigeminal canal morphology supports an evolutionary trend of increasing facial tactile specialization in the mammal lineage. The Anatomical Record:1–48. doi.org/10.1002/ar.2...

Bayesian tip-dated timeline for diversification and major biogeographic events in Muroidea (Rodentia), the largest mammalian radiation - BMC Biology Background Extinct organisms provide vital information about the time of origination and biogeography of extant groups. The development of phylogenetic methods to study evolutionary processes through ...

López-Antoñanzas, R., Simões, T.R., Condamine, F.L. et al. Bayesian tip-dated timeline for diversification and major biogeographic events in Muroidea (Rodentia), the largest mammalian radiation. BMC Biol 22, 270 (2024). doi.org/10.1186/s129...

Upper arms, forearms, even parts of our wrists originally arose in fish living in rivers, streams, and tidal environments hundreds of millions of years ago

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

One of the most recent uses for the "Leviathan" painting (2008) is on the cover of the Smithsonian edition of ANCIENT SEA REPTILES, by Dr Darren Naish.

#SciArt #Dinosaurs #PaleoArt #JurassicPark #JurassicWorld

Cladograms representing current model of modern and (known in pop culture) extinct reptile phylogenetic relationships.

Skeletal mount of a Tyrannosaurus rex biting into a dead Triceratops (also a fossil skeleton). At the National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C.

Skeletal mounts of a Ceratosaurus flailing about, just having been hit by the thagomizer of a Stegosaurus. At the National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C.

Skeletal mount of an American mastodon trumpeting. At the National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C.

Skeletal mounts of a Diplodocus looking at the camera and Camarasaurus rearing up to eat a tall branch. At the National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C.

Y’all weren’t kidding, Deep Time is gorgeous

One of my favorite #MonkeyCruise inspirations!

Rugops

More placoderms! Gymnotrachelus, Heintzichthys, Latocamurus, and Pholidosteus. #paleoart #sciart

Paleoinspired robotics as an experimental approach to the history of life The emerging field of paleoinspired robotics studies ancient organisms and their evolutionary trajectories.

Using robotics to understand the history of life. The latest from our collaborative team with @vdisanto.bsky.social, Michael Ishida, Fumiya Iida, and Fiji Berio. With robots we can model great transitions in the history of life. See: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...